The mayor of Greece’s second-largest city Thessaloniki has been treated in hospital after being beaten up by about a dozen people, officials say.

Yiannis Boutaris, 75, was kicked in the head and legs and beaten with bottles by a group of nationalists angry over his appearance at a remembrance event.

The mayor, who is known for his anti-nationalist views, was attending a ceremony to mark the killing of ethnic Greeks by Turks in World War One.

Politicians have condemned the attack.

A dozen people approached Mr Boutaris demanding he leave a flag-lowering ceremony in Thessaloniki on Saturday to mark what is known in Greece as the “Pontic Genocide”, Thessaloniki city council president Calypso Goula said.

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The Greeks were evidently angry over Boutaris’s comments saying he doesn’t “give a sh*t” if Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the former president of Turkey from 1923 to 1938, killed Greeks.

As mayor of Thessaloniki, Boutaris declared his wish to build an Islamic mosque, monuments of the Thessaloniki’s Jews and of the Young Turk Revolution. According to Boutaris, the construction of these monuments will attract Jewish and Turkish tourists to Thessaloniki, who will want to visit their father’s home town. As a result of Boutaris’ systematic efforts to attract tourists to Thessaloniki by showing the multicultural past of the city for three years from 2010 to 2013, visitors to the city from Israel and Turkey increased several times.

Some Greeks with right-wing and far-right views praised the attack on social media. The mayor of Mycenae-Argos, who is a member of the center-right opposition party New Democracy, tweeted “This is the fate of the traitors,” with “traitors” written all in capital letters.

While the BBC said “politicians have condemned the attack,” politician Kyriakos Velopoulos seems to have openly justified the attack on Greek television.

According to Google translate, this video is titled, “Kyriakos Velopoulos justifies the attack on Boutari in Euri.”